Encryption is used for a variety of different online purposes. In some cases, encryption may be used from a networking standpoint, to establish virtual private network (VPN) tunnels between network routers. Encryption can also be used to group geographically separated devices in to a virtual local area network (VLAN). Encryption techniques may further be used to convey certain types of network traffic. For example, a banking website may use encryption, to protect the privacy of any exchanged data, such as a customer's personal information. In another example, an email server may use encryption to protect the contents of messages exchanged across the network.
Despite the proliferation of encryption in computing systems, encryption also presents a number of challenges to organizations. Notably, encrypted traffic may be opaque to the various intrusion detection and prevention systems used by an organization. Thus, a malicious entity may attempt to infiltrate the network of an organization by concealing an attack within encrypted traffic.